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Thursday, 10 August 2017

ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA DRIVERS WINDOWS 10, Sacramento, CA, USA

That aside, the ASUS UX305LA gets the interior design and the IO from the ASUS UX305FA. There’s a fairly large palm-rest with blunt tapered edges around, and while this model does not get the very low profile of the ASUS UX305FA, is still slim enough so the edges won’t cut into your wrists in any way while using it on a desk.

As for the IO, you’ll be getting 3x USB 3.0 slots, a card-reader (an SD card will only go in half-way though) and a micro-HDMI connector. It’s a pity Asus could not make room for a full-sized HDMI port on this thing. Some adapters will be included in the pack, but not a micro-HDMI to HDMI dongle. The DCIN is placed on the right edge and personally I prefer to have it on the left and leave the right side as uncluttered as possible.

Asus will offer the ASUS ZENBOOKUX305LA in a bunch of different configurations, with Core i3, i5 or i7 Broadwell U processors, 4 or 8 GB of RAM, 128 to 512 GB SSDs and either a FHD or a QHD+ matte display.

ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA PERFORMANCE

ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA is almost perfection in affordable ultra-portable laptops. Its stylish, well built, incredibly light and has a screen, keybaord and battery life to rival the best.

This is a fully-fledged broadwell part in terms of its power saving features

Massive battery life from a smaller battery

Full-size SD card reader and a microHDMI

Aesthetically, the ASUS UX305LA WINDOWS 10 is simpler than all the Asus ultrabooks before. Previous Zenbooks sported a pattern of concentric circles on the hood in one way or another and that particular detail is gone here, leaving a smooth, plain metallic lid cover that feels a lot like the ones on the Apple Macbook Air or the Dell XPS 13. The only element breaking the spartan design is the shiny logo. We do have what Asus calls the Aurora Metallic version here, but they’ll also offer a darker color scheme called Obsidian Stone, which will feature the rippled pattern.

The entire body is made out of aluminum, which covers the hood, the interior and the belly. In fact, the only plastic element is the bezel around the screen, flanked by a thin layer or protective rubber, meant to ensure that the display won’t get in contact with the laptop’s body when the screen is closed.

I have one more thing to add here: there are two tiny plastic feet on the laptop’s back edge and the device is actually lifted on those feet when you open the display past 90 degrees. That makes it rather difficult to keep in place on a desk, especially if it’s a shinny one, since the plastic feet provide very little friction, unlike the actual rubber feet on the belly. But at the same time this trait creates extra room below the laptop which will help with airflow.

Speaking of airflow, since there’s a Broadwell U platform inside the ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA a fan and better ventilation were needed. As a result, Asus added some intake vents on the belly, to complement those under the hinge. The exhaust is still behind the hinge, but there’s a bigger gap between the actual hinge and the cooling grills on this design than on previous Zenbooks, which creates more space for the heat to go out or the fresh air to get in. And that actually helps, as you’ll see below, in the temperatures section.

ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA DESIGN

The screen on the ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA is splendid, except for one aspect that Asus could actually address on the final release models: color calibration. Greens, Blues and especially the White Point were completely skewed out of the box on this unit that I got to play with, but a calibration run with my Spyder4 turned the panel in one of the most color-accurate I’ve seen in a while on 13 inch laptops. This sort of calibration should be included by default, cause the panel is really good and Asus needs to take advantage of it.

That aside, you’ll enjoy the brightness, contrast and viewing angles of this display. Since it’s matte and fairly bright, it can also be used in well illuminated rooms and even outside. It does not support touch though and a model with a touchscreen will not be available, from what I know right now. But if you do want a Zenbook with modern hardware and a touchscreen, you should check out the ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA.

The keyboard on the ASUS UX305LA feels identical to the one on the Zenbook UX305FA.

I’ve typed about 5000 words on it the last weekend, including this review, and I can conclude that it’s pretty good for a thin and light computer. The keys travel fairly deep into the chassis, deeper than on my Dell XPS 13 for instance, and feel mostly firm and responsive.

However, they lack a precise click response which means you can’t intuitively tell whether a hit has been registered properly or not, at least with my style of typing. That lead to a fair amount of missed strokes in the first hours of using this keyboard. I kind of got used to having to hit each key a bit harder after a while, but that had a negative impact on my typing speed.

I also found that typing on this keyboard is rather noisy, with the Space key being especially loud, which could be an inconvenience for those you working in quiet environments.

The layout on the other hand is standard for a Zenbook and mostly alright. You do have to live with the tiny arrow keys and the Power button integrated as the top-right key.

ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA REVIEWS

Software wise, the ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA comes with Windows 8.1 of course and a few preinstalled programs, both a bunch of Asus apps (including one called GiftBox which is basically a doorway for various other Asus software) and a few trials (Office, antivirus, etc). You should get rid of them all or better yet, if the Microsoft Store is going to sell this laptop in your country, try to get one of their Signature Edition versions with no bloatware at all.

All these aside, the ASUS ZENBOOK UX305LA is fast. This particular configuration got the best benchmark results of any Core i5-5200U configuration tested so far, but since it isn’t a final production unit, I’m not going to include them here.

The laptops flies in everyday use, boots up quickly, resumes from sleep in about one second and handled well all the basic tasks I threw at it, including browsing, watching all sorts of video content and playing some PC games like Starcraft 2, Dota 2 or Dirt 3. The Intel HD 5500 Graphics can only offer that much though, so don’t expect it to be spectacular for gaming. I’m not going to get in depth here, but you should check out my review of the Dell XPS 13 for what exactly you can expect from this Intel platform in games.

Asus UX305LA has a high frequency vibration when charging. You cannot see it vibrate but when you touch the upper part/above the keys, you can feel this. It vibrates when charging even when the fan is off or even when the computer is power off. The vibration is stronger when the battery is lower/below 20%, and you may feel the back of screen vibrates as well.

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